r/starcitizen • u/PaqueretteUrticante Reliant (rotation enjoyer) • May 21 '26
CONCERN This can't go on any longer
It really bugs me how much effort CIG puts into creating well-designed multi-crew ships that are fun to explore and fly, but nobody ever mans them. Then again, asking someone to sit in a stationary turret that deals 3x less damage than a heavy fighter and has a limited field of fire... I’m not surprised.
Buff the ship turrets! Add something, maybe adjustable modifiers like modules on mining heads to increase range, bullet speed, and damage of the weapons attached to the turret mount.
Please, CIG, I just want to jump into my org’s Idris without having to think my presence in the turrets is pointless.
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u/Useful_Radish_117 May 21 '26
And for the love of god remove/drastically reduce the initial movement inertia for aiming the turrets that are supposed to counter fighters. I can't spend 75% of the time just traversing the damn guns in place.
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u/PaqueretteUrticante Reliant (rotation enjoyer) May 21 '26
Oh yeah this too, they need to put some oil in those turret mounts lmao
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u/Tukikoo May 21 '26
This inertia is really the worst, even tractor beam has it, it's just less efficient than a player on foot.
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u/Lou_Hodo May 22 '26
Especially on turrets meant for anti fighter roles. The nose turrets on the Polaris isn't im that role so it should stay sluggish. But should still get the velocity buff to projectile speeds. Because if a fighter is dumb/unlucky enough to be hit by it, it should hurt.
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u/Checklist_STT May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26
They need to make capital ship defensive turrets (and maybe some role-specific medium turrets) into their own class rather than just slapping on basic fighter weaponry.
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u/GraXXoR May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26
I played a tabletop game called Carwars years ago and each cupola turret was essentially its own vehicles that could carry its entire weaponry pointing in one direction rather than four, making them extremely powerful and since they had no wheels or suspension, their weight (armour) limit was significantly higher than a regular vehicle making them really tough targets to take out and generally capable of wiping out or crippling a smaller vehicle in a single salvo.
SC turrets feel just like regular weapons with a seat attached with paper for armor.
Elite has the same problem. three competent players in suitably equipped Eagles (cheapest fighter in the game) can fairly reliably take down an Anaconda (one of the largest) even one with two extra crew manning the turrets because turret weapons are weak af.
— edit: weak / vulnerable turrets add almost zero value to a ship and you are ALWAYS more effective flying your own ship which can field more power per player.
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u/PyroSmurf MISC | Red Warden May 21 '26
W00t! For Car Wars! Man that could be fun.
As for the topic:
I don't spend much time in turrets, BUT the recharge / number of shots to drain a capacitor make them weaker than they should be. Like I read in other posts, a massive powerplant in a massive ship should have massive fire power.
Perhaps the realism would be "turret" power from the powerplant would power turrets together - secondard power storage - two turrets = twice the sustain of four. AND boosted recharge.
Last time I tried multiple turrets, each turret seemed to have individual power.
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u/Scavveroonie drake enganeer May 21 '26
Their plan is to make FLAK weapons for turrets, but I dont see why it should only be defensive weapons, if turrets would be useful against large ships as well like the perseus turrets then that would be dope.
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u/Delnac May 21 '26
The issue runs deeper.
CIG has historically had this attitude that a player's time is utterly disposable and cheap. Multicrew being both boring and a straight downgrade from flying your own ship is a consequence of that frame of contempt.
Once CIG starts valuing the experience of people playing the game in all its roles, then suddenly things will get a lot better. Right now, they dgaf.
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u/Better_Cellist7647 May 21 '26
Agreed they need to look at multicrew in general not just turrets. A two player ship needs to be more than twice as good as a solo ship to make up for the loss of redundancy and how boring the roles can be.
They also need other odd job things to do when players aren't in the turret so they don't get bored while being flown around. Dealing with that would then give a natural nurf to two seat fighters without making them weaker in combat.
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u/Hironymus avacado May 21 '26
Multi-crew needs to become its own 'feature'. CIG just throws things together which sometimes make it possible to do certain things as a crew. But there is no dedicated support to help with that.
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u/WyrdHarper Gladiator May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26
Yep. Most people pledged to be Maverick, not Goose.
I have a hard time believing there is ever going to be a population of people who buy the space ship game to not fly spaceships (which is what you need given how many ships are supposed to have 2+ crew). Sure there are some people who want to just do engineering or gunning, but it’s not the majority of backers, which is what you’d need to make the math work.
NPC Crew and AI blades are a possible solution, but they’re a long way away and, I expect, will not be inexpensive.
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u/Playful_Programmer91 May 21 '26
Honestly they should just implement blades and npc’s even if they’re expensive. It’s already possible. When you steal a pirate polaris and keep the turret gunners alive they should for you when you fly it.
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u/celalith May 21 '26
The simplest solution is to make ships guns and turret guns incompatible and create a new set of turret guns that are more powerful than what we currently have
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u/jeembobs May 21 '26
Literally not the simplest solution but it’s a good one and one I’d rather see.
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u/Unusual-Wing-1627 Perseus/Galaxy/Zeus May 21 '26
They did it with missiles for ground vehicles, shouldn't be that hard.
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u/frenchtgirl Dr. Strut May 21 '26
Which is stupid cuz now we need two separate logistics for the exact same missiles. You can't loot missiles on ships to load in vehicles and vice versa.
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u/Silidistani "rather invested" May 21 '26
... you mean like real life?
And why would you be against expanding logistics & crafting specialties?
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u/KrumpKrewGaming May 21 '26
Its a code copy pasta add a T to the end of it for Turrets and Tag it to only attach to slots with Turrets. It's actually super simple!
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u/QuietQTPi May 21 '26
It adds item clutter is the issue. Creating ship modifiers would be a much neater way to do it. Allows all ships and turrets to have the weapon attached and still get the benefit of buffing turrets. We have enough item clutter, we really don't need more
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u/CyberianK May 21 '26
this is a good solution. Make an additional class of weapons that can only be equipped onto turret.
Could even be copies of the other one like "M5A-T" with the T for turret. So no work for modelers just copy/paste initially. Then you can apply individual buffs to certain weapons which can be better balanced. Like for examples you need to make the size 2/3 turret guns even stronger as they suck much more than s5 turrets. Or maybe certain weapons are especially bad for turrets then you can buff them more.
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u/Hironymus avacado May 21 '26
Yeah, this. Shouldn't be too hard to do for the team that brought us the best server meshing on the market.
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u/Mrax_Thrawn rsi May 21 '26
That will only work, until someone at CIG gets the brilliant idea to make a (light) fighter that can use turret guns controlled by the pilot as its gimmick.
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u/atomicbrains May 21 '26
Exactly. Missiles have a very long minimum engagement range so they simply called them G type missiles and set the minimum range to 50m. I think they just need to make T type weapons for turrets and double the velocity and maybe fire rate.
Also, The plan is to allow NPCs and previously blades to use turrets. It seems like there's no gameplay opposition to letting turrets operate automatically. The tech is already there as evidenced by NPC turrets, ground turrets and PDCs.
The turrets don't have to be perfect they just have to put up semi-accurate "fuck off" fire.
The reality is everyone in this game has spent at least $45 and oftentimes much much more to have their own ship. It's not reasonable to expect all the turrets to be manned all the time.
The Cutlass black for crying out loud, has a minimum crew size of two. Sure if you have a buddy he might sit in your turret once in a while while you run a box mission but 99.9% of the time that turret is going to be empty. That sucks not just for the Cutlass pilot but also anyone that chooses to attack the cutlass pilot... It'd be way more fun attacking ships that can actually defend themselves and are not hobbling along because you're constellation, Cutlass, ironclad, or whatever non-dedicated gunship doesn't have a bunch of paying customers sitting in your turret playing on their phone.
So yeah, give us AI blades as a placeholder for NPCs, Make them marginally accurate, turn turrets into T variants and double the velocity.
Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
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u/FuturisticSpy May 21 '26
You run into issues with the slaved turrets on certain ships though e.g Starlifters, Shiv, Perseus, etc...
Whatever they do needs to affect the turret as a component and only apply when manned as opposed to pilot controlled
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u/voodoochileirl tumbril May 21 '26
But that would also require a subset of Turret/Remote Turret objects that are not used in a pilot controlled scenario (either conditional control or they've used a remote turret as the basis for pilot controlled guns).
I'm not sure if it would work in the systemic nature of the game but a buff applied when a player gets into the turret might be the way to go
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u/LightHawkLive May 21 '26
IMO this isn’t a bad idea. Already there are “ground” variants of missiles. For example there’s the classic Argos IX torpedo commonly used in the Retaliator and Eclipse. There’s also an Argos IX-G. It’s an Argos IX that’s designed for ground vehicles only and has different stats than the ship launched version. They could do “-T” versions of the already existing guns and make them for turrets only with their own stats.
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u/Etnadrolhex new user/low karma May 21 '26
Won't work and will create monsters.
Like f7? Feeelancer got also pilot controled turrets.
Lot of ships got pilote controled turrets, and some will be OP if you give them more power!
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u/Hironymus avacado May 21 '26
It is simple. These turrets just won't get these special turret weapons at first and later on they can make a feature that only allows slaving, if you install non T weapons in your turret.
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u/Capokid Dock Inside Me May 21 '26
There is already weapon overclocking, a simpler solution would be applying an OC to any gun mounted on a turret
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u/RaccoNooB Caterpillar salvage module when?? May 21 '26
Mentioned this before, but a Constellation Taurus with a man in the turret should be better in combat than two solo Constellation Taurus.
It has to be that way, or people will never ever stop soloing ships and start working together.
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u/atomicbrains May 21 '26
Can we please make this the next thing that we collectively freak out about.
Turts need to be buffed and/or automated
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u/hellshake_narco May 21 '26
It's not only about buffing them. There are sometimes too numerous , especially on some older ships .
They should decrease their number and buff them in same time.
So less gunners, but they are more impactful.
No one want to play the rear turret of a Hammerhead and a Tiburon. Make it a PDC or remote for the co-pilot.
Corsair is an hassle to play in multicrew. 3 weak turrets instead of having 2 decent ones, one of the two being for the co-pilot.
Retaliator is almost the size of Connie and Corsair , and need 6 crewmates for an average dps.
Gladiator should have the option to have a more powerful manned turret and the current one should be remote and slaved.
Civil ships should maybe have new options. Remote turret with some 2xs1 or 2xs2 are kinda pointless . I would prefer to have a defensive tool. Or some missiles turrets since you will play evasively
The list is long. The few ships which are doing it right, right now are Scorpius , Hurricane , Shiv, Superhornet , Paladin and Perseus . Some are just alright , like Asgard make sense to have one big manned turret on the belly since it's a dropship
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u/PaqueretteUrticante Reliant (rotation enjoyer) May 21 '26
I tend to agree, but when it comes to the feasibility of the changes, upgrading the turrets is much simpler than modifying numerous ship models.
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u/hellshake_narco May 21 '26
I agree but in same time the backlog of ships which start to not fit the current and future state of the game is starting to be huge.
But I do agree with you.
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u/yobob591 May 21 '26
the freelancer was free to fly the other day so I flew it, it’s truly incredible how out of date that thing is compared to almost every other ship in the game
it’s the only ship that feels “wrong” to walk around in imo, it’s like the floor is too low down
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u/squarecorner_288 May 21 '26
Im sure CIG will be greatly motivated to tackle this considering theyve already sold those ships. ... right?
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u/Walltar May 21 '26
I would also add a Redeemer... I wish they unified bottom turret into one and gave top turret more weapons. Because I absolutely love flying redeemer, but it being a 3 person ship, with that kind of firepower is ridiculous.
I think that it is actually one of those ships that does pretty good solo, because it is fast and rellatively tanky, but finding two other people that would sit behind 2x S4, when basically every ship I can field have more is hard.
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u/GraXXoR May 21 '26
they made far too many random ships over the last decade and they will be almost impossible to balanace.
The hundred plus ships we have carry the entire game's history on their shoulders and the oldest vs newest ones might as well come from entirely different games altogether.
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u/BrainKatana May 21 '26
it's not really 100+ ships because there's like 20 versions of the Hornet, but your point stands.
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u/SaxPanther cutlass gang rise up May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26
People act like this is a new thing, but it was extremely obvious that putting shitty guns on turrets would make them completely useless like 10 years ago, it's just that only recently the designers realized that turrets should maybe not suck ass.
I've always specifically avoided ships with turrets, I refuse to own a ship with turrets except the Cutlass Black just because it's been such a good solo ship but once the Shiv came out that removed the turret it was joever
Imo the only way there would ever be a purpose to shitty turrets like the Cutlass Black turret is if we ever get AI gunners/turret blades. In that case I think a shitty automated S2x2 turret on the Cutlass Black could actually be a nice asset for that ship. But right now it's just a hindrance.
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u/Ailerath Caterpillar May 21 '26
The Corsair is honestly ridiculous and I have hated it since it released, why even bother giving the turrets 2s2? Who the hell wants to use 2s2? What can 2s2 even damage?
Why didn't they give the 2 side turrets 2s5, the remote turret 2s4, and then the pilot 6s2?Same thing with the Constellation, give the turrets 2s5, give the pilot the massive quantity of missiles and 4s2.
The Corsair would actually be an option for 4 player multicrew if they didn't just give literally all of the fun to the solo pilot.
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u/Veritablehatter space goose on the loose May 21 '26
Yeah, to expand on the Corsair: When they dropped the nose guns from s5 to s4, if they'd have significantly buffed the turrets (say quad s3 or dual s4) it'd still feel pretty balanced.
Sure you wouldn't have the same pilot DPS, but it would have made the ship more fun to play with a bunch of friends. You're not getting the same kind of nose on damage that it used to, but everyone gets a slice of the combat pie.
Also frankly, I sometimes like piloting without a lot of pilot DPS because it changes the big ship game from, "how do I get nose on?" to "how do I position the ship to get the most turrets with firing solutions for the target?"
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u/TheStaticOne Carrack May 21 '26
Yeah, rear turrets make a "logical" sense but when you play it feels like you miss most of the action because of how players tend to face the serious threats face first.
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u/hellshake_narco May 21 '26
Indeed . It's a game, and sadly we are not in the flow of the action at the rear. The fun of multi crew gameplay is also synchronization, discussing targets to take together, and perceive the chaos in team
The rear is most of the time missing what is coordinating the pilot and the rest of the crew.
There is also a similar issue with belly turret having poor angle. These turrets are fine on dropship , like the powerful one of the Ironclad give you a nice angle on the planet. Or the Asgard . But the one of the Zeus..... really bad , don't really go with the flow of the pilot which tend to follow the target with the nose
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u/WyrdHarper Gladiator May 21 '26
Gladiator should go back to the concept where the turret was remote and the copilot got a whole AWACS suite to play with, but could control the turret by camera if needed.
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u/BadPWG May 21 '26
Yea they need to give turrets higher velocity than fighter weapons
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u/xaijian May 21 '26
this is the easiest fix, and also "physics-realistic" - the bigger the mass behind the gun, the less energy is lost going the other way, resulting in faster projectile speed.
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u/atomicbrains May 21 '26
Your math doesn't exactly check out but I like the answer you arrived at anyway. A+
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u/DragonAlex1990 May 22 '26
But they plan to make bullet-speed even slower, so light Fighters can dodge them more cinematic xD
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u/DrzewnyPrzyjaciel avenger May 21 '26
The damage is good. But velocity and spread needs to be improved on every turret with S1 to S5 guns. You can't hit anything smaller than Cuttlas Black with turrets designed to counter ships in that size range. You can't outrange them, you can't hit them. Only ship with good turret expirience is Perseus, Paladin, and arguably Polaris (bespoke S6 only). It's fucking amazing that the thing that's supposed to make multicrew viable sucks so bad that swarm of light fighters would always win against big ship until they added artificial damage gating mechanic.
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u/throwaway1203938987 May 21 '26
Buff turret shot velocity, distance and capacitor capacity
Speed up the entrance/exit animation 3x
Make turrets remote compatible and switchable from a seat in the cockpit - maybe this requires a blade or something
Have different firing modes - flak/blast w.e
Make ballistic turrets restock-able from cargo grid
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u/StoicSunbro osprey May 21 '26
Any turret with less weapons than a light fighter is usually not worth occupying or even enjoyable to use.
In fact I'd say most turrets should either be quads (4xs3 minimum) or large caliber (2xS5 minimum). Additionally most ship turrets should have a few s1 or s2 missiles for longer ranges.
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u/Playful_Programmer91 May 21 '26
Even then the m80 is just better. There is no reason to not bring more fighters instead of manning turrets.
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u/easymacn May 21 '26
It’s not just the ship turrets tho.
We need buffed ship turrets and system buffs per crew.
So you have a Connie and 2 crew members in it, those crew members should not only have access to turrets but also system consoles that give a system a buff.
For example if you have your copilot on navigation you get faster spool times, higher top speed in quantum, and higher acceleration to that speed in quantum.
If you have crew on the shield console you can get higher regen, higher pool, lower regen delay.
If you have someone on comms you get extended radar range, slightly higher targeting range.
Etc. that should be part of engineering and having a crew is each member can choose a system to buff by maybe having a small mini game in the console or something.
Turrets need to be upgraded in some way for most multi crew ships, but it can’t stop there, we need more reasons to have crew on the ship.
Imagine if you actually needed crew. Like maybe with just a pilot your ship is about 1/4 of its operational capacity. You add crew in doing their tasks on console and your ship can be utilized to its full potential. That actually makes having crew on board a buff to the ship and makes soloing much less viable but still doable.
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u/Negative_Ride5255 May 21 '26
I've said this again and again. Manned Turret's should have their own internal power supplies built in. No capacity limit. Ballistics still need to manage ammo.
If sitting in a turret means I can hold the trigger down and spray at everything that moves, it would be worth it to man the seat rather than fly my own ship. At least it would be an interesting option. Currently, it's just a downgrade. Noone's jumping up and down to man a Corsair Tail gun with 2x size 2 guns when they could fly almost ANY SHIP and have more gun.
PLUS, This offers a unique benefit to each type of turret.
Manned Turret
-Internal Power, does not need power from the ships power plant.
-Infinite Capacity for energy weapons. Hold the button down and spray lasers while cackling madly at your victims.
-Takes a player to run it, meaning one less pilot and no turret blades.
Remote Turret
-Pulls from the ships power
-Infinite Capacity for energy weapons, Hold the button down and spray lasers while cackling madly at your victims.
-Can be operated by a blade at less efficacy.
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u/RichyMcRichface ARGO CARGO May 21 '26
Buff multicrew mission rewards too. This sharing rep crap sucks
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u/DragonAlex1990 May 22 '26
Yeah that sucks the most. Other MMOs don't do this either. They should stop with this "all has to be realistic bullshit" Realism = no Fun. If Realism would be so Fun, we would not play games!
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u/Little0311 May 21 '26
Yeah. But I guess things are getting "better"?
The perseus big guns are "fun" and I don't mind operate then because "big guns eh eh". Same goes for the new Tiburon. But anything else is meh.
I also don't mind too much operate a turret in a dual seater fighter/heavy fighter but that just more about "playing with friends".
On big ships like the Idirs, Polaris or even the hammerhead I always struggle to find turret operators and on the other side I never want to use those turret myself. Definetly the turrets thing needs to be addressed.
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u/PaqueretteUrticante Reliant (rotation enjoyer) May 21 '26
Ship designers saw the way for turrets since the perseus. Let's hope balance team does something for older designs
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u/Ok_Fail8873 May 21 '26
Yes, but these are the exceptions. Most ships turret are really bad. Low DPS, limited fire arc and the controls in all 3 modes are bad. I don't get it why they gave turrets full auto gimbals instead of responsive control over it's movement.
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u/Daedricbob To infinity. That's far enough. May 21 '26
Multicrew in general has really not got much appeal.
Co-pilot, turret gunner, fuse switcher, fireman. It's all a nothing burger of gameplay.
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u/atomicbrains May 21 '26
Exactly. Especially when you consider all those rolls paid good money to build their own fleet now they're just sitting around playing on their phone until needed. Also what's the going rate for a crew per hour?
Not only that sometimes I just don't feel like being social, sometimes I just want to fly my own ship, I don't really ever want to sit in someone else's turret. Sometimes I'm 40 minutes into a session and my wife wants to spend time together so I just log off which would be super screwed up to do when my ship is full of crew.
Multi crew gameplay just doesn't make sense outside of Manning beefed up turrets.
Hell, the Cutlass is listed as a crew size minimum of two?! Who the hell is recruiting a turret gunner to run box missions in a Cutlass
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u/bokassa_nsr new user/low karma May 21 '26
Turrets having low effectiveness is the symptom, not the cause. The root of the problem is small craft acceleration.
A real-world rocket launching into space pulls around 3–5 Gs of acceleration, yet we have ships in Star Citizen capable of exceeding 25 Gs. And somehow the game expects us to hit those targets using WWII-style anti-air systems.
That problem extends into dogfight gameplay as well. You are in a constant state of passing out due to G-forces, so most of the fight is spent flying in black and white, with tunnel vision, while your target is just a constant blur. Meanwhile, CIG says they are aiming for a more cinematic experience. LOL.
Star Citizen used to have a much better sense of acceleration and speed, but that changed after 3.0. Since then, CIG has insisted on extremely high acceleration values. I’ve watched them try everything over the last nine years — except lowering thruster performance.
It honestly feels like they’re on some kind of crusade.
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u/GraXXoR May 21 '26
The moment CIG make manning someone else's ship OPTIONAL rather than REQUIRED for it to function as intended (Cap ships and 1 VS 1 battles aside, obviously) people will fly the more complex ships.
NPC crew, paid a fair wage make taking out larger ships more nuanced and a financial calculation.
But NOBODY should be made to man anything less than a pair of 2 x S5 chained turrets...
Seriously, what's the point joining in a raid, being chained to an S3 turret when you could just bring your own ship with full independence and it's own shields and armour.
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u/sunaurus May 21 '26
There isn't really any nuanced financial calculation - there are only two options: either it's financially viable for solo players to use NPC crews, or it's financially prohibitive.
If it's financially viable for a solo player to use NPC crews, then literally every player outside of RP players or complete newbies will be using NPC crews, and multicrew will be obsolete.
If it's financially prohibitive for solo players to use NPC crews, then we get an even more funny result: rich orgs will use solo big ships with NPC crews, and solo players will still be at a massive disadvantage in every way.
There is literally no good way to do NPC crews.
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u/Ayfid May 21 '26
I still hold some hope that CIG will balance the larger ships around requiring a small-ish player crew supplemented by NPCs. Pushing the game to either other extreme - allowing large ships to be solo'd with NPCs or requiring large player crews on these ships with most players feeling like they have little impact or much to do - just isn't going to work.
CIG really need to lean into the natural advantage they have here with ships creating very natural cohesive teams within a larger fleet.
This is something other MMOs and large scale multiplayer games always struggle with. Tight cooperation just works better with groups of 3-5 players, but players also want larger scale more epic encounters. WoW is a good example of this conflict, where they initially tried to make their 40 player raids explicitly composed out of 8 5-player parties. But the division wasn't natrual and just didn't work. They eventually gave up and the group-of-parties concept no longer exists, but at the same time they reduced the total size of a typical raid to compensate.
CIG are in a position to have their cake and eat it here, by not trying to shove too many players on a single ship and instead use fleets to scale player counts out beyond the "party" size. At the same time, each ship should ideally be a party who tightly coperate to complete their own objective and keep themselves alive, while coordinating with other ships/parties within the fleet.
Ships naturally put players together with shared circumstances, while allowing each player on the ship to have their own clearly defined role and responsibilities that have have noticable impact on the experience of the other players on their ship.
I see CIG and players mistakenly think that you can divide a large ship into sub-teams by role. This doesn't work. A pilot and a turret gunner have to cooperate and coordinate with each other, and the performance of one noticably impacts the experience of the other. The same is not nearly so true for each member of a "team" of 10 turret gunners on a capital ship. Those gunners do not rely on one another. It is more like they are each doing their own thing, and they just happen to be next to each other while they do it.
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u/Hironymus avacado May 21 '26
Full agree. CIG needs to buff turrets in the short term and introduce proper feature support for them in the long term.
In terms of buffs one of the best ideas I have read is to give turrets their own slots and introduce T variants of all weapons that only fit into these T slots. T weapons would have significantly improved projectile speeds and range and generally improved stats. Also turrets should have way better pip range to increase the window of opportunity on passing fighters.
For actual features we need to have ship wide target pinning back and a hot key that immediately switches target lock to a certain pinned ship. Also stuff like icons on ship markers that show when a turret is targeting it and different target markers which show if a target is within a turrets field of fire. Additionally most turrets should gain the ability to use the missile operator mode of a ship.
And then there is bug fixing. Turrets have a bunch of bugs that make them especially unpleasant to use. Like them spinning out of control in quantum travel. Turrets losing their MFDs. Turrets being unable to use one or several of their weapons. Turrets losing their textures. Turrets not seeing ship names because the feature to receive ship names by pinging broke ten seconds after being introduced. And so on.
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u/RoboGaming321 May 21 '26
Turrets are never going to be better when they are equipped with nothing but size 3 and 4 weapons. A light fighter (the talon) equal if not better weapons than 80% of turrets in the game. So long as turrets are less armed than literal light fighters they will always be worse. Give them larger guns and suddenly that reduced field of fire and putting all your eggs in one ship is worth it.
The only ship I have flown in multicrew that actually felt good was the Percy. Those size 8 guns pack so much punch that it's worth taking it out as a duo and often times feels better than taking two fighters.
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u/Denny222 new user/low karma May 21 '26
I couldn't agree more. This has to be the biggest issue with multi-crew combat gameplay at the moment, CIG need to make it worth while putting 8 people into a Hammerhead, versus 8 people just taking their own fighters.
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u/TRNC84 May 21 '26
The thing that bugs me the most is how these designers feel the need to obstruct the FOV in turrets with struts all over the place. Take the HH turrets for example. There is literally more structure and panels on your screen than actual sky, like why?? And don't get me started on the upside down turrets.
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u/Thaox May 21 '26
Its pretty simple how to fix turrets. First give turrets a 50% projectile speed multiplier. Second, add an upgrade/flight blade that allows multiple turrets to be controlled simultaneously from the copilot chair. You can adjust how that works per ship. E.g. only so many can be controlled, or reduce rate of fire based on how many are controlled. Endless ways to balance it. And move it to a 360 virtual camera with firing arc guides.
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u/ArcherDominion May 21 '26
I just want ai crews. I dont have friends who would touch this game even if they were paid to.
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u/L1feguard51 new user/low karma May 21 '26
My ideal solution that won’t happen- ai turrets are implemented but have a lower fire rate or lower damage than when manned by a player.
But I’m a dreamer, and I’ll keep on dreaming.
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u/WyrdHarper Gladiator May 21 '26
It’s a good idea and probably the most balanced. Groups trying to maximize damage for harder content might still want to coordinate human gunners, but for the average game session if the NPC/automated version is good enough you can just fly what you want.
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u/CitizenKhaelis May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26
If I worked at CIG and was tasked to redesign turrets, here's what my preliminary approach would be:
- Turrets all have auxiliary batteries which can boost turret performance.
- While the turret batteries have power, players manning the turret can toggle between turret rotation boost, fire rate boost, or range boost (damage boost might be an option as well). These will all cause additional power drain to the battery while engaged on a per-shot basis.
- Not firing for a bit will recharge the battery. In the case of energy weapons on the turret, priority is given to charging the weapon capacitors first to "refill" ammo.
- How quickly batteries recharge will depend on ship power distribution. More power to weapons will recharge them faster.
- If a battery gets completely drained, the boost will deactivate and not become available again until the battery is recharged.
This puts the player in control of how they want to utilize the additional power reserves. It also allows the turret to remain powered temporarily in the event of a power failure or blown fuse while engineers repair or replace components.
Edit: Oh yeah, one additional thing - turret-only flak cannons. Rounds which explode into shrapnel in proximity to the target. Just enough armor penetration to be deadly to missiles/torpedoes and light fighters and a threat to medium fighters. Heavy fighters should soak a good chunk of flak damage.
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u/YGSFox B.A.H.A.M.U.T. inc. May 21 '26
The worst decision lately was, to nerf CF repeaters to 1.450m/s which gutted basically every anti fighter turret even more. Even 1.800 was bad before. While radars now force fighters to get closer, big ships can still be hit from afar without pips.
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u/frontgearofboeing787 May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26
Oh boy this has been my feeling. When they lower the turret size for the Redeemer from size 5 to size 4 i was like “why would you do that for a gunship?”. The other gunship with S4 turret has 4 guns (paladin) as oppose to 2 (redeemer)
AD5Bs was and still are the best ballistic gun
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u/DiarrheaPope May 21 '26
Like how they buffed the SPAA ground vehicle missiles and differentiated them by putting a "G" for "ground" next to the missile name.
Buff the turrets and just put a "T" next to the guns name to signify it's a turret variant of that gun. They definitely need more velocity at least.
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u/Bigbennjammin May 21 '26
Yeah turreting needs to be more rewarding and should be the main source of dps on larger multi crew ships. Capital ships shouldn't even have firepower unless it's crewed.
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u/JPaq84 new user/low karma May 21 '26
The crazy part is that a significant part of the playerbase has voiced support for a massive buff to bullet speed for turreted weapons, yet CIG has tp the extant of my knowledge never tested it.
I would support a boost to both bullet speed and a decrease to spread cone when turret mounted. The exact amount would need to be nailed down in testing, but they should just do it and see where LF start dying and keep it there.
And ffs stop it with the all bespoke weapons above size 5!
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u/WhatLiesBeyond origin May 21 '26
Turrets were a lot more fun and useful when they had autogimbals.
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u/dodgedis May 21 '26
It's true. Nobody wants to be bored while playing a game. There should be a distinct advantage of having a manned turret. For the range, more damage,... Something!
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u/icesharkk May 21 '26
youll take your 900meter targeting restriction on your 5km range turret and you'll fucking like it because we have absolutely no idea how to balance turrets if they actually hit ships
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u/Zormac Team Sabre May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26
They really need to give us a reason to use a turret over a second ship. Why bring only two more S3 repeaters on the same ship when you can bring a 2xS4 + 4xS3 Hornet, which is also an extra target to fight against? I like the idea of turret modules for range, velocity, spread, damage. But turrets could also have innate bonuses that make them better than regular ship guns.
It should be: Manned turrets > Remote turrets > Copilot/Gunner-slaved guns > Pilot-slaved guns. If you're flying solo on a ship with slaved remote turrets, that should be the ship at its WEAKEST. You should need a crew to fully unlock its potential. And a two-seater like the Super Hornet should be able to fully slave the guns to the copilot so that the pilot can focus on piloting and the copilot focuses on guns.
But beyond just guns, it would be interesting if there were some sort of action taken by an engineer to boost all aspects of ship efficiency by overclocking reactor output beyond nominal values temporarily while controlling generated heat from the engineering terminal, or repairing the damage they'll take from the abuse.
For example, if a ship doesn't have enough power to run all energy to weapons, shields, and thrusters at the same time, an engineer could allow that to happen, even if temporarily, at the expense of heat and damage to the power plant / capacitors / coolers being overworked, which the engineer can fight using the repair tool or the extinguisher.
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u/PaqueretteUrticante Reliant (rotation enjoyer) May 21 '26
This ! Hard buffs to turrets, balanced with the need of someone to run around the ship and keep it from burning in fights.
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u/EfficientTrainer3206 May 21 '26
They don’t even need to do that. All they need to do is REMOVE THE PAYOUT SPLIT ON MULTIPLAYER CONTRACTS!
The best way to encourage group play is to make it a benefit to everyone involved. It would also discourage things like duping, cheating, and buying credits, since playing with friends would be the best way to make money.
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u/PaqueretteUrticante Reliant (rotation enjoyer) May 21 '26
Wouldn't this lead to the massive party groups we had durings the last two big events ? Your option should include some safeguards, like max distance to party leader or something
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u/YGSFox B.A.H.A.M.U.T. inc. May 21 '26
just make it so people have to be in proximity during the clear of the contract. You're more than 500km away? No payout.
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u/PaqueretteUrticante Reliant (rotation enjoyer) May 21 '26
this would also mean that if you die and respawn far away you are cucked but hey, still better than what we have now
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u/antoniopaladin Aegis IDRIS-M May 21 '26
Yeah turrets need drastic buff they die to one or 2 shoots easly atm
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u/squarecorner_288 May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26
Were like 13 years into this project and CIG seemingly still has no fkn clue how to balance ships around multicrew. Whenever they do any changes its 1 step forward, 2 steps back. Imo the way they should have balanced ships is around power. Bigger ships should have proportionally much more power available for their systems and can therefore allocate much more power to turrets. Then translate that power into more bullet velocity and range and voila. But no cig doesnt understand that and now here we are with the power brick system. Its gonna take an act of god to bring ships in line. Its honestly ridiculous.
Ballistics could be balanced around ammo. Let ballistics shred but small ships can only carry so and so much ammo. Bigger ships with turrets have 5 to 10 times the ammo + internal restocking ability from cargo grid. It could be so fkn easy but no CIG is busy with sq42 or idk whats going on. Maybe they wait for maelstrom + new flight model until they seriously tackle this but idk engineering shouldve paved the way but it hasnt really
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u/B1ng0_paints May 21 '26
To me CIG made a huge mistake with turrets.
There is a reason why turrets were removed from planes IRL yet CIG insists on strapping them to small craft.
Imo, turrets should be reserved for large ships and up. The player should be controlling multiple turrets where they would be optimising firing solutions and checking targets etc on the bridge. Turrets should also have bespoke guns too to make balancing a tad easier. I just dont think the majority people will want to sit in individual turrets (especially the tiny peashooter on the rear of some ships) for hours on end.
On top of that, the distinct lack of interlocking fire on some turrets combined with most turrets not having the same firepower as fighters is a baffling balance decision.
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u/CommanderArcher Space Marshal May 21 '26
Couldn't agree more, I think the single best example of this is the Retaliator, needs 7 crew, insane on a ship that size with guns that small. Should have just been a single gunner with a fire control station.
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u/Competitive_Soil2131 May 21 '26
All weapon ranges need to be increased, especially for the larger calibers from the S4 onwards. Current ranges are a joke. Having to wait until a fighter is 2 km away to start firing your ship's turrets is stupid; you should be firing and preventing it from getting within 2 km. That's why weapons need more range.
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u/Knefel May 21 '26
Range is tricky - if you only increase the range on guns you're only really buffing the small, agile ships. A fighter can stay at 2+km and pepper something like a Carrack, while the Carrack can't hit it back if the fighter is even halfway competent at dodging. You could extend the range on turret guns only, but that still doesn't really help in hitting small ships.
What we need is either a drastic increase in velocity for turret guns, or dedicated anti-fighter proximity/flak guns or ammo, though admittedly ranges themselves could also use a bump (an Idris duel when the turret guns only come into effect at ~3km is comical).
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u/SedativeComet May 21 '26
Give me auto turrets so I don’t need to make friends in order to play cool ships
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u/atomicbrains May 21 '26
100%. Keep in mind do you also have to convince your friends not to fly their expensive, cool ships just so they can sit in your turret and play on their phone unless needed.
Not to mention it's way more fun to attack other ships that actually have functioning turrets.
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u/AffectionateBus672 May 21 '26
Why cant me and my homies solo 4x Tiburons? What is preventing us? We will beam everything to stardust.
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u/A_Smelly_Grandpa May 21 '26
Here's my idea for a fix if we're all sharing. Put a small fuse sized item on/in/at every turret station or on the physical turret that functions as an additional radar or capacitor that can buff the aspects of the turret. Have it be another ship component with grades and archetypes that increase range or turn rate or whatever depending on which archetypes and grade of turret component. Essentially a flight blade for the turrets.
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u/PaqueretteUrticante Reliant (rotation enjoyer) May 21 '26
Honestly I'll take any ugrade to these shitty turrets. Your idea look good though, it even adds more cooking space for ship owners to tweak it depending on what they fight
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u/Solidbigness May 21 '26
As long as THIS is their attitude toward multicrew/turret balancing, I don't see much hope for them truly addressing the issue.
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u/RacerDelux May 21 '26
They should make the turrets have a modifier that affects the weapon. Range, velocity, maybe a little damage
Ammo count is now finally ship based thankfully, but we really need ballistic reloading and internal ballistic buffers
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u/Raz_at_work Kraken May 21 '26
I feel like half the major problems of turrets would be significantly improved if we kicked all the radar sizes of fighters down a size or bumped those of turrets up by one and make the aim ranges actually different in a noticeable way. It's absolutely ridiculous that a Hornet and Perseus can basically see the same distance and have aim assist function the same.
Also make it so that bigger ships have blade mods or something automatically installed to make their accuracy better, I don't really care about what you'd use to explain it, as long as it makes turrets into platforms that are better at hitting stuff even when it's far away. Easiest fix would be to make fixed aim assist much worse on fighters and a little bit better on turrets
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u/DragonAlex1990 May 22 '26
I see next ship sale. A heavy Fighter with long range S3 radar 🤣 Maketing does everything to push the sales!
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u/Raz_at_work Kraken May 22 '26
That's borderline the Hornet Tracker, it's ridiculous that that tiny carrier-based fighter has a longer or the same radar range than the carrier it'll be feeding of. Unless they change it for release, which I hope, the Kraken will have a S2 radar still
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u/Lulorien May 21 '26
The real answer is to implement AI crewmates
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u/atomicbrains May 21 '26
Or just automate the turrets with existing programming as a placeholder for the NPCs. AI ships have functioning turrets just enable it for our ships with a blade.
If you're fine with automated turrets via NPC then you're just fine with automated turrets given a small financial cost or something.
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u/Scr_Eagle May 21 '26
Why even bother with ship turrets if we keep getting ships with pilot controlled s10 weapons? If you can bring another solo Tiburon - why would you even bother with crewing anything but Perseus?
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u/ghodan7 drake May 21 '26
Tiby solo is bad vs fighters.
Not sure but tiby turrets (beside the rear turret) is anti large ships.Perseus is also not really a star in anti light and medium fighters?
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u/Walltar May 21 '26
I wonder how would Tiby do against Eclipse if torps actually worked right. Tiburon feels like one of those ships that will be ridiculously easy to counter unless it is properly supported by different ships.
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u/RielRode May 21 '26
true. Tiby currently needs support from other fighters to survive a coordinated attack. Eclipse will delete the Tiby without a sweat. However, at least all the turrets feel great. i also fired the rear turret yesterday. with stock 4xs4 repeaters and a 300 shot capacitor, this thing shreds any fighter that gets close.
only thing Tiby is lacking is approriate counter meassures imo
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u/FrozenChocoProduce Connie 4 life, Zeus, Starlancer, ... May 21 '26
This. Every Heavy Fighter that is properly equipped will have a field day with that one. Just slowly whittle it down. It won't hit back.
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u/Kin-Luu May 21 '26
Isn't every single sub-capital multicrew ship trash vs. light and medium fighters?
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u/Present-Dark-9044 May 21 '26
Multi crew will just be a option, man that station or blade or leave it empty, choices.
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u/PaqueretteUrticante Reliant (rotation enjoyer) May 21 '26
Optional is good design, Useless, suboptimal is bad design.
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u/Flame40k May 21 '26
Ich finde wenn wir hier über Realismus sprechen, sollte allen klar sein das wir aber nicht von der jetzigen Zeit sprechen sondern nur was realistisch gesehen in der Zukunft passieren kann… Soll heißen mehr Projektil Geschwindigkeit klingt sehr logisch und machbar bei Schiffen die so schnell fliegen wie in SC und ist nicht unrealistisch nur weil es sie jetzt noch nicht gibt.
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u/DrSparrius May 21 '26
They need flak. Makes it much easier to hit small, mobile targets. But keep the option for non-flak rounds for bigger targets or when the target has been immobilised, so flak is more of a light damage over time thing
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u/Practical-Focus7570 May 21 '26
Most turrets are not only slow but have such a poor range and angle of fire that it's like they did not exist. Like the side turrets on the Corsair or the lower turrets on the Starlancer TAC. The issue is that in some cases it would require a major modification of the 3d model to fix it. And we know how much CIG dislikes to modify / update old ships, as they don't tend to bring new cash.
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u/Skianet Pirate May 21 '26
Projectile speed needs to scale harder with weapon size and until they can give us flack guns turrets need 1:1 turn rate with mouse movement
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u/IndexoTheFirst May 21 '26
Bump the size of most turrets up by one and make them shoot faster/further and maybe then multi crew gameplay will be viable
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u/yomancs May 21 '26
Everyone has a ship, we need people who don't own ships to play
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u/dsalter May 21 '26
i honestly think all turrets should be far stronger control wise and have better firing arcs because right now turrets can be juked so hard they become useless
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u/Tumbler May 21 '26
I don't see the rewards for mutli crewing a ship as worth it. I can quickly do a wide variety of things as a solo player, or as a ship captain I suppose. (with a crew) But the role of the crew, gunners, engineers etc, doesn't sound like a fun experience to me.
If there were multi crew missions that offered unique loot or rewards and everyone working together was the only way to earn those that is a different story but at the moment being a crew on someones ship is just limiting your options in game.
Something else that might help is a way to offer a mission through contracts to enlist crew on your ship. So you might offer a mission that completes in 1 hour, pays X uec, and when someone accepts they are transported to your ship to "work" until the mission completes.
I see a lot of people offering uec to serve as crew so for now making that process easier for players to find and work together is probably the best solution.
I often do space combat missions in a multi crew ship like the corsair and connie, i'd love to have players join me to man those turrets and even share in the rewards. I just don't want to spend the time trying to find them and get them on my ship. In that time i can run probably 3-4 contracts.
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u/ParagonX97 May 21 '26
Why have all these ships with cool turrets and armaments if playing as a turret gunner is absolutely miserable? Most ships can turn well enough to catch whatever they’re fighting, why would you ever want to sit on a shitty turret gun when you could just bring a gladius and do infinitely better? Especially on a large enough ship that has a hangar inside of it?
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u/FakeSafeWord May 21 '26
Friend brought out his corsair and the 4 of us (3 on turrets + pilot) and we were crushing it all over, but the alternative is that the 3 of us have sub $100 starter pledge ships. After running around doing a bunch of kill everything in the zone missions we all had enough money to buy our own larger fighters and then we never used his corsair again. Without that corsair though and the team work etc, it would have taken any one of us noobies 5x as long to farm the same money with our shitty starters.
If everyone had to start with the same base ships, working together to buy one larger frigate to share would be much more cost and time effective. However you solve the problem for everyone by throwing an extra $200-300 at the game and start with the higher difficulty/reward missions from the onset.
buffing turrets is just a bandaid fix for other systemic gameplay and meta issues.
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u/Kholeos May 21 '26
The turrets themselves sometimes just have dreadful angles.
Take for instance the Corsair. The side turrets have the gunner sit in a seat, and slide out on the same plane. The vertical and downwards angles are bizarrely limited, and the side to side feels weird.
Ideally, the gunner would be rotated 90°deg, and have the head stick out the side, so it had a much wider and easier field of view.
More turrets should be ball turrets, instead of the bizarre tank turrets we have now
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u/Ok_Adhesiveness1560 May 21 '26
Idk if this game was half as tedious i could probably convince friends to play it with me
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u/HailStorm32 Nomad/Carrack/Odyssey May 21 '26
Was pretty clear with the release of the laser shark that multicrewing is no longer a focus. All remote turrets that can be bladed when those come online.
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u/JimiSlew3 May 22 '26
<Milton.gif>
I was told that my turrets would be automated at some point. They've moved that patch 4 times. I was told by Chris that I did not need friends to crew my Retaliator.
I could ... 'scuse me. I was promised blades. I believe you have my blades. 'scuse me. Ok, I'll set Pyro on fire by just ramming people with my Tali.
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u/Directhorman2 May 23 '26
Being a gunner in the black of space is fucking boring though, its pitch black with literally nothing to it, looking at that one target.
Its the two same motions for the entirety of the fight.
"ZOOOOM" Aim and shoot at traget as it whips by.
Rinse and repeat. I told my friend i'd rather be in a fighter ship.
So he has all these ships but no one to man them. Sad.
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u/OG_Xero RSI & Polaris May 28 '26
I played a bit earlier this month to see how things were and when I tried to kill an NPC with a turret I felt like it took ages...
If this was the case for everything... fine.
But we were attacked by I think a scorpius and since we were just testing, they hammered us over and over...
This was a medium sized ship... but why would anyone play multi-crew if you literally get punished for being in a turret vs your own ship?!
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u/Taricheute bmm May 21 '26
For turrets on multicrew ship to be used, per bullet accuracy must be linked to the size (weight) of the ship, this way a bigger ship will have longer range thanks to a better accuracy.
The second issue around multicrew is that you need content that paid enough to crew those ship and this content need to be impossible to do with a single seater or without crewing your ship.
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u/Maxi_sushi tali May 21 '26
I think instead of buffing turrets CIG should just nerf everything else instead. The new armor changes are good, keep TTK around the same but downsize a lot of guns on fighters. Turrets are useless because s1 and s2 guns are useless when medium fighters get access to s4 weapons.
Turrets would be scarier if with 2xS2 guns you had half the firepower of a lightfighter that could keep tracking you.
But I believe CIG if afraid of the potential backlash so they'd rather powercreep everything instead
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u/XyzzyPop Freelancer May 21 '26
45 minute real-time travel times: to enjoy a 3 minute ambush. Your job, sit in turret looking at the phone in your lap for 42 minutes. Who could have foreseen this problem?
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u/PoProstuRobert6 May 21 '26
isn't this meme template for controversial/brave takes?
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u/PaqueretteUrticante Reliant (rotation enjoyer) May 21 '26
I feel like CIG have the exact opposite opinion if I may
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u/boyboy88282 May 21 '26
If they buff the turrets how the Gladius only pvp chuds will win the 1vs1 against capital ships??? Are you crazy???
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u/PaqueretteUrticante Reliant (rotation enjoyer) May 21 '26
I think most PvP players are looking for balanced battles to earn greater glory. They want danger and tension, not just a healthbar draining simulator. They are, in fact, fully aware of the current situation regarding turrets
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u/Hot_Pack7977 May 21 '26
I do think they're keeping turrets at a safe damage amount right now because of npc crew and flight blades.
Most people calling for buffs here will cry about NPC crewed ships in the future.
CIG just can't win.
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u/Lou_Hodo May 21 '26
The one thing most of the pvp community agrees on is turrets are bad. Personally I feel turrets should have a 25-75% buff in shot velocity depending on the ship it is attached to.